The Switch

77

Will’s rented Toyota was parked right in front of the house. Once Tanner had gotten in behind the steering wheel, Will came around and got into the front seat. “I’ve got the fob,” Will said. “This car is push to start.”

Tanner pushed the starter and the car came quietly to life. He drove in silence. After a few minutes, he said, “So how did you find me?”

“You’re not the only one who knows the tricks. Like I said, my mother sold houses.”

Tanner remembered Will mentioning that on the train ride to Boston. His mother sold houses on the side. To keep them afloat.

“Is that right?”

“This is going to be very simple. You’ll hand me the laptop, I verify it’s the senator’s, I take it, and I’m gone. It’s over.”

“Am I supposed to believe you’d fire that gun at me?”

“Try me and find out.”

Tanner half smiled. After a minute or so, he said, looking straight ahead, “You’d kill for a laptop? Really? For a laptop?”

“‘Kill for a laptop’?” Will said. “That’s not the way to think about it. “Would I kill to protect the country? Would I kill to protect a future where a truly remarkable woman has a decent shot at the Oval Office? Kill to protect a transformative political career that could mean so much more than either of our lives? Are you telling me there’s nothing you’d kill for?”

Tanner said nothing.

“If you don’t have that, that one thing you’d kill for, or die for — your life is meaningless,” Will said.

But Tanner kept staring at the road and said nothing.

This was not a game, Will thought. Not a sport. This was serious business.

Will found himself thinking about Peter Green, the student president at Miami of Ohio he’d gotten elected. He’d had to resort to certain measures back then too. Otherwise it would have been a squeaker — no, actually Peter would have probably lost, based on his own informal polling — had it not been for those certain measures.

Thanks to his clerical job at the admissions department, he had access to his classmates’ folders. One day, during the election campaign, he pulled the admissions folder of Jake Califano, Peter Green’s opponent, where he learned that Jake had been suspended for a semester at Groton because of a disputed, hushed-up rape accusation. He made a furtive copy and offered it as a leak to The Miami Student. But they wouldn’t run it, so he told a few people, and of course the rumor spread. In a matter of days, everyone knew about it. He didn’t ask Peter’s permission to do this, because frankly, Peter didn’t take the campaign as seriously as Will did. But somehow the word got around to Peter, about how Will had tried to slip the damaging information to the student newspaper. And Peter tracked him down at the dining hall, clapped a hand on his shoulder, and said, “We’ve gotta talk.”

Peter asked if it was true what Will had done, and Will, anticipating Peter’s gratitude for winning the election for him, happily fessed up.

Peter replied, “Kind of a douche move, Penguin.”

The memory pained him. But it was also an important reminder that you didn’t get into politics to be appreciated. It was a dirty game. The ones who operated at any serious level did whatever it took.

For Susan, he would do whatever it took.